On an island in the sun
by Zenzao
Summary: AU mid-Cold Days. Still torn up by guilt over killing Lily under the mantle's influence, Harry finds himself drawn into the politics of Winter/Summer interaction again when Maeve, subdued and purified by Mab, is sent to escort him through the Summer-ruled Hawaiian Islands on a mystery mission. Bitterness, snark, and reliance on each others skills will come to pass before its over.


**Disclaimer:** Harry Dresden and the respective characters, settings, terms, objects, and et all depicted herein from The Dresden Files belong to and are the property of Jim Butcher and/or his publishers. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.

**Spoilers:** Cold Days.

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><p><strong>On an island in the sun.<strong>

* * *

><p>My first real mission acting as Mab's <em>Mortal Champion and Servant of Idle Whims<em>, her _Plaything Eternal_ and _Hit-wizard Extraordinaire_, the _Envoy and Executioner of Winter's Will_ - well, you get the point. Her _Winter Knight_, to sum up all the lesser titles in one blanket clause - my first true dictation by the Winter Monarch and Queen of Air and Darkness arrived only days after putting a rather _absolute cold_-stop to the madness happening upon Demonreach.

Maeve, the Winter Lady, dropped out of a rift in the Nevernever shortly before sunrise and landed squarely in my lap on the disheveled mattress I had installed inside of the cottage only the night before.

I hadn't been asleep when it happened - my thoughts were still haunted by Lily's tragic death, and being situated so closely to the scene of the crime left me with little shivers dancing up and down my spine whenever I closed my eyes to try. I kept seeing her _righteously fury_ expression turning into furrowed confusion; crumbling into open-mouthed and widened-eyed shock as the first dollop of blood spilled past her pale lips and soaked into the front of her shredded and burnt sundress; and finally the abject fear, the naked terror that ravaged her features and left them etched forever in a silent gasp.

Pain ate away at my heart for failing to save her in time. For cutting her down with nails that angled more akin to two-inch claws, my wrist settled halfway through her stomach and grasping her spine, the full sadistic glee spread over my face as the mantle of the Winter Knight set my blood afire and granted me strength, speed, and the rapid agility needed to leap across the ten foot gap separating the Ladies of Summer and Winter from their respective Knights. Lily's too-warm blood and burning guts lay across my hands, and before I could do anything about finishing the job with the other_ Nemesis_-influenced Sidhe beside me, Mab had struck instead and spirited Maeve away in the split-second of shock and satisfaction apparent on the remaining Lady's face.

After that, it had all been a matter of clean up. Handing the fiery corpse in my arms to the grieving Summer Knight and looking away from the anguish in his eyes, the unspoken promise of retribution therein; sending Karrin, Thomas, and the rest of my back-up squad away; and trying to come to grips with everything I had been through recently, _again_. Thomas had at least dragged the beaten and battered mattress off of the Water Beetle when I told them I was staying behind on the Whatsup Dock, though it had been neglected in favor of sitting or striding, keeping awake.

What little of my mind that wasn't preoccupied with killing both Summer Ladies inside of a decade turned over Demonreach itself, and the un-and-godly horrors imprisoned however-deep beneath my feet. I only spared Mab and my position fleeting moments over the following hours into days.

So no, I wasn't asleep when Maeve's naked, artfully-restrained and too lithe form landed on me in a rush of downy snow and sleeting hail, a snowstorm contained inside of a breath of air. The rift closed as soon as the last hint of bleached dreadlocks cleared the opening, pitching her thighs-first against me.

I snapped upright with a hint of that mantle-speed in reaction to what I assumed to be a threat, only to check the motion half-way through unleashing a salvo of _Forzare_-leaden pain when she landed and knocked us both flat.

The back of my head rocked against the underlying stone beneath the thin mattress in the next moment, cutting off the intent and the strength behind my spell. I blinked my eyes back open again in mild disorientation and simmering anger when I finally processed the squirming mass above me. I felt a bit of vindication, however, as I was pretty certain she was only giving herself some nasty rope-burns in places where you don't want rope-burns.

I was also certain that it was indeed Maeve, and the one who had instigated my prior actions again Lily. Unlike the last time we had been so near to touch, I felt nothing stir inside my soul from the mantle, not so much as a whisper of the wicked desires I had barely managed to hold at bay before.

What I wanted the most was to throttle the mad tart, and for a brief moment, I wondered if that might very well be the reason Mab had thrown her daughter-the-betrayer against me. Hadn't she intended Maeve's execution if need be just a week earlier? Had she finally decided no more could be taken?

As Maeve struggled upright, I saw that the answer was a disappointing 'No' given the note tacked to her chest by her barbell piercings. The script was etched in white-blue ink, the lines harsh and jagged, as if the hand responsible had used a pickaxe and chisel rather than a pen.

When I reached out to grasp the bottom of the letter so her constant movement wouldn't interfere with reading, a shock of ice-cold radiated into my very bones - perhaps my prior assumption hadn't been far off.

"No wonder you won't s-settle down," I said in a hard-neutral tone, keeping the chattering of my teeth down to only one mispronounced word as I glanced up at her face. She glared back at me with all the vitriol of a woman scorned and eager for vengeance, squirming not-unpleasantly against my lap.

I turned back to the note and read quickly, the better to get her off - of me, rather - and felt incredulousness replace most of my emotions by the time I finished.

To summarize; Mab had purified her daughter again, as she had my godmother. There was nothing else written down, no hidden P.S. requesting termination, punishment, or otherwise - and I turned the sheet of thin ice up to check the back, noting the quiet noise Maeve made in the back of her throat the whole while - leaving me just as stumped as before I had read it.

With reluctance I dipped a finger into the edges of her plush, pale-blue lips and slid along the gag keeping her quiet, pulling it down to her chin after a moment or two amidst a pool of warm saliva.

My first response, watching it drizzle across her tits, was "Didn't your mother ever teach you to swallow?"

Closely behind the snark I felt a tinge of distant desire down south. Honestly, a bound and naked woman shifting all over you is going to get some attention sooner or later, Sidhe be damned, and it doesn't take the predator-nature of the Winter Knight mantle to get that kind of rise out of a normal, hot-blooded man.

"Okay, you've had your fun. What the hell are you doing here, Maeve?"

Then again, I guess I don't count myself among normal, hot-blooded men anymore. I gripped her around the shoulders and pushed her up against the wall, swinging myself out from underneath her, and stood up to retrieve my duster from the other corner of the cramped room.

It helped, now that I couldn't see her any longer, to remember why I wanted nothing to do with the Winter Lady.

"Release me, wizard." She panted like a cat in heat as she said it, and I paused a moment in sliding one arm through the matching sleeve, then shook my head once and finished. When I turned around she was wearing a pleased smirk, a splaying of the teeth.

I pointed my force rings at her. "You have until the count of three to start talking, Maeve. If you don't..." I trailed off, giving it a bit of thought.

What was one more fae's death given all the slaughter I had participated in so far? What was _her_ death given how much evil she had spread since _Nemesis_ nestled into her heart - or hell, even before that? Surely Lloyd Slate had contributed a torture or twenty at her behest.

She seemed to read the way of my thoughts within my expression, as she spoke. Killing two Ladies seems to do that for a guy. "It is my punishment to oversee your protection within the Summer lands, wizard. We venture to the mortal island of Hawai'i to settle a debt between the mothers."

I blinked. "Did you just say _'the Mothers_'?" I repeated back at her.

Maeve managed to make that smirk slant in ways that forced me to meet her gaze again. She was also still drooling slightly, both of us well aware of where it was going.

"Nay, wizard. The mothers, the Queens. You know of whom I speak."

_That_ made me blanch in a whole different way from what I had before. She meant _Titania_ and _Mab_. I was about as eager to enter the land where Titania was strongest as I was to embrace Snaggletooth the shark-faced Outsider in holy matrimony. I even opened my mouth to tell Maeve to go screw herself, but two things stopped the words dead in my throat; the first, being that she was already well on the way to that. The second, being that I felt the mantle of the Winter Knight rattle and withdraw as I tried to deny my Queen's orders.

That, more than anything, convinced me of the authenticity of the situation. I gasped and dropped down to my knees and one hand, my head dipping to the floor as my spine about collapsed. The moment I was essentially bowing to the Winter Lady, however, the mantle returned again. My back re-set itself and nerves and tendons began to function as they were meant to.

Maeve abruptly panted and let out a shuddering gasp, and I had the joy of watching her climax from point-blank range from the sensation of power she wielded over me for that moment.

Disgust welled up and crushed down the traces of lust I had felt before. If I had to deal with this, I sure as hell wasn't going to enjoy it.

I shrugged out of my duster and cut the enchanted rope about her body with a choice spell or two, then shoved the leather on over her naked frame. "Shut up and get up."

I snagged my ruby-encrusted pentacle amulet and staff from where I had left them and marched out of the cottage.

* * *

><p>I only had to consult my mother's old ruby, the store of her knowledge regarding the numerous Ways throughout the Nevernever, to figure out the route we would have to take. I knew that going through from the actual island itself, however, was tantamount to spiritual-suicide.<p>

I waited until Maeve had finally emerged some ten minutes later, the rope tied in varying ways around my duster to give her both a semblance of modesty and, at the same time, an emphasis of what she had, before I re-entered the cottage and began feeling out for the residue of the forced-Way that Mab had created just to get her daughter here.

Such constructs were not quick, not cheap, and not easily ignored. They wouldn't last a sunrise on a place as saturated as Demonreach, and even when I managed to detect where it was, I was still surprised that a faint tether was still available to access from here.

With a weary "_Aparturum_," I slashed the tip of my staff over the closed-opening and managed to tap into the deteriorating passageway. "Come on, before it closes."

Maeve strutted back over to me, swaying her hips. I didn't trust her as far as I could throw her with a Soulfire-empowered _Forzare_. "Lady's first," I said. She eyed me and stepped through into the upper reaches of Arctis Tor, momentarily hesitating. I followed her and closed the Way, then hastened toward the lip of black-ice.

I had bad memories of this place, almost as bad as those inflicted in the past week. Now it seemed Maeve had her own. The sooner we were gone the better. The next Way opened more naturally, the first in a long and unpleasant journey.

* * *

><p>Close to an hour after leaving behind Demonreach and the two of us finally appeared on the dusky shores of O'ahu. It wasn't the island we needed, merely the first in the row as far as getting to the destination went. Like all good and unnecessarily complicated things, you had to cut back and forth between the main seven before you could access the Way to the eighth, Kaho'olawe.<p>

Maeve had remained tactfully silent throughout, speaking only to provide the aforementioned destination, something I found unsettling and more than a hint suspicious. She still eyed me darkly, but that pleased little smirk remained on her expression otherwise. I made sure she was never behind me to be certain I wouldn't get a knife in the back, though where exactly she could have hidden one...

Well.

It was still dark when we emerged to the first beach, not far from Honolulu itself. Waikiki beach, most likely.

The first local spirit jumped us five feet past the Way. I honestly had no idea what to expect from the fae that inhabited these islands, but a coconut mask with sulfurous red eyes certainly placed fairly low on the list.

I batted it aside with my staff, only to have the thing explode into a fiery aura and come back twice as hard and fast. As I prepared to swat it again, Maeve _moved_ and a tendril of cold frost burst from her palm, engulfing what might have been a sort-of sprite and strangling the life from it until all that remained was a hard ball of ice.

"As you were, wizard," she said gleefully.

* * *

><p>Sweating, itchy, and pissed off, I slashed open the thirteenth Way and stumbled out with Maeve right on my heels, chucking Winter doom left, right, and center at the Mo'ai statues lumbering behind us.<p>

Despite dozens of cracks that bristled with spikes of ice, the enchanted stone warriors hovered forward with an implacable fortitude to see us dead and gone.

We had already been ambushed twice more since the initial welcoming assault about forty minutes ago. Most of the time, Maeve gave me first rights to blowing it out of the water, and while I tried to figure out what would work thereafter, she would promptly swat it aside like nothing and we'd continue along our way.

That all changed when the cannon-fodder fell back and the Big Dogs emerged from their Doghouses. The guys with decades and centuries and _millennium_ of time to stew and build up their strengths.

Guys like Scarecrow, or the Eldest Gruff. Only these weren't entirely tied into Summer status, in the same roundabout way that the Erlking and the goblins tended to freelance most of the year and come in to call when they were required by the Courts.

Apparently Summer had given the call, because these guys sure as hell had answered.

The nearest floating Mo'ai shook as a lance of plasma burst forth from each dully sparkling eye and razed the ground beneath it in startling yellow-blue flames, shaking the soil and air with displaced electrons. The other three repeated the gesture, and as I fell toward Kaho'olawe at long last, I reached back and snagged Maeve about the waist to drag her with me.

Three bolts passed through the space we had just occupied and vanished when they exited the Way. The other five angled downward and exploded just before that point and showered shrapnel of red-hot sand across our bodies.

I screamed. I panted. I closed the Way with a hoarse, panicked shout.

I may have blacked out.

All I know is, I opened my eyes again a lesser eternity later to find the pits scoured throughout my shirt and jeans cleansed by winter ice, and Maeve sitting near me with half her dreadlocks burned away and faint scars dotting her previously-perfect skin. I had never seen her look so worn down before, though her features rearranged themselves as soon as my eyelids began to stir.

I still caught the glimpse of uncertainty before it was gone.

"Are you able-bodied again, wizard?" she asked me without inflection to her tone.

I grunted an affirmative and sat up, reaching over to grasp my staff and use it to help hobble upright. Maeve rose a smidgeon unsteadily herself.

I took my first step forward before remembering where we were. A distant thudding impacted the air every four or five seconds, alerting me to the Mo'ai's efforts to brute-force their way through the lingering traces of my hastily closed Way.

I had no doubt in my mind that they would succeed before much longer. This was their home turf, their prime territory, and I was half-mad with agony when I attempted to shut it. If they didn't break through within the next minute or two, I'd deep-fry and eat my hat.

"Lets go."

* * *

><p>"You can not be serious."<p>

"I can. It is. It will devour us."

There is a reason why this island is deserted. It isn't the Nature Reserve. It isn't because of the military training that went on here, though that certainly helped.

It's because when they dropped bombs on Kaho'olawe, they woke up what was sleeping here, and it plagued the souls of everyone that was available in the aftermath until the government stepped in and told them to get out of dodge.

Mab probably had a hand in that. Which was why her Knight and Lady were here, now, probably seventy years since things began to go to Moria.

The dripping genius loci of Kaho'olawe, wrapped in magma, garbed in shadows that pulsed and hummed with the faint flash of violently bright light on occasion, oozing pockets of bright yellow lava, took another step forward and spread yellow-orange cracks of molten stone and flame surging throughout the distance between us for another twenty feet around. They immediately began to dry and crust over into obsidian glass.

Sweat glittered across Maeve's neck and the side of her face. I'm sure my own were drenched by comparison.

"How do we kill this thing? What are we even supposed to do here, Maeve?" My voice cracked at the end and I swallowed dryly. One lumbering arm reared back and a ball of lava arose across its misshapen palm, which it threw toward the stalactites dipping down from the maw of the cavern over our heads.

I jumped back and to one side to avoid the immediate drip of flesh-devouring fiery-stone that sloughed free and splashed where I had been standing. Maeve followed my motions and moved to the other side, no longer so sure about protecting my hide as thinking.

I let her, trying desperately to figure out something on my own.

A gurgling roar filled my ears and shook my teeth as it spoke in a garbled tongue. Probably something ancient-Sumerian. Pits bled up around us from the red stone and began to gather greater sums of raw magma to them.

Without stopping for thought, I leveled my staff at the first two and bit out, hard, quick, "_Infriga!_" I felt my gaze overlap temporarily as the mantle finally stirred, seeing things as if in double vision. It cleared in the time it took to exhale my spell, but I felt _sharper_, _stronger_, and above all, _furious_.

Maeve's head whipped around to stare at me as the gathering pools flashed from edge to center to edge again into ice at a rapid pace. It was already starting to melt by the time each reached the other side from where they had begun, but I threw myself across them and landed beside my Lady in a single bound, taking in her own slightly hungry expression with a splay of my teeth.

As soon as we were done here I'd take her over the thing's frozen corpse.

With that invigorating promise in mind, somehow knowing that she was aware of my intentions, we turned back to face the genius loci. I knew enough in the general range from my work with Demonreach, particularly that this one should have been predicting our moves with more ease than it already had.

The answer to that came as I listened to my power; it was responding not just to my Lady nearest, but to my Queen; here she had long ago laid her power to still that which we now faced together. Her power suffused the ground, the _very air_ itself, if faintly. It masked our actions and reactions and slowed the loci down to regular thought.

My lips peeled back further into a genuine snarl, satisfied at having hampered one of its greatest abilities. "_My Knight_," Maeve hissed into one ear, dragging me away from the bubbling pit I had not noticed forming beneath our feet.

A surge of irritation rose at her interruption and my own stupidity. I could still, despite my prowess, be killed. It took more effort than I desired to put into it, but I still responded to her warning. "_Thank you._"

With that we turned our attention to wearing away at the loci's physical manifestation. The shards of constantly accumulating obsidian gave me regular opportunities to shred its limbs with _Forzare_, and together we would freeze the stumpy, hole-riddled section and repeat the process, stalling it from approaching very far.

Still. It burned and it bellowed, and as before with the lesser of the great guardians, I was showered in pain and agony in return for every inch we cost the lava demon.

My Lady had to turn her efforts to cementing the floor beneath our feet in renewing platelets of ice, else we'd have sunk into the pot of fire and flame from which it came. And that, at last, sparked the idea I needed to put it down for a time.

Turning from the regenerating body before us, I gathered my will and, despite the fatigue that drew my features taut, released my intention against the floor and walls just past it where that pot was boiling. A hairsbreadth before the spell left my lips, Maeve's will collided with my own and fortified it, directed it crucially with exacting attention, supplying my body with her own strength in the Winter Wellspring.

"_Dispertius!_"

The dormant volcano rumbled as four man-sized holes exploded outward, spilling the fuming mess out across the outside world again. The genius loci had taken no more than two steps forward, and though it cracked the ice we all stood upon from wall to wall, no new obsidian developed therein.

I sank to one knee as the exhaustion of my spell overtook the mantle, and Maeve collapsed beside me, hyperventilating at the shared taxation. "Never..." she began in a whisper, "have I... nor again..." her words were halting and trailed off. She managed to fortify the floor again before it broke and threw us down into the still-draining inferno, however.

I felt my desire for combat ebbing as the mantle receded its attention. And the genius loci took another rumbling, furious step forward, unable to bring forth its will exactly as before.

_This is it,_ I thought slowly. I could still faintly detect Mab's leftover energy abound, but grasping it was not possible as I was. I could barely support my own weight, and that with the staff for help.

It lobbed another sphere of lava and I raised my shield bracelet, uttering "_Defendarius,_" while I still had the energy. Blistering heat bled across the surface and I was jarred backward by the strength of the blow, but it splattered harmlessly across the shield-globe without directly burning myself or Maeve.

The loci seemed to draw itself upward, then, shuddering, be it in primal rage or some other sense. The walls shook again more heavily, and I collapsed backwards on my ass, nearly losing the shield in the process.

I looked over to the Winter Lady, no longer sure of how I felt regarding her. Her lips had cracked, dripping faint blood across my duster and along the ice below. For some reason she seemed especially vulnerable, though I knew otherwise.

We had no way out of this except for through the Way we had come, or else downward into the pit below. Even if I wanted to, I knew that if I tried to escape before we had finished here, the mantle would abandon me as it had on Demonreach.

"God, I hate these decisions." Struggling to my feet, I met the burning demon's eyes and dug deeper than I ever wanted to dig, beneath the mantle of the Winter Knight, and into my very soul itself. It mattered little how physically drained I was if this thing ate me alive.

I had to strike at it while I still had the resources available to do so.

I was just probably going to kill myself for it instead.

"Maeve, I need whatever you have left to spare." If my hunch was right, I _could_ pull this off, but I needed her help for at least a moment or two to know. Her head turned up toward mine for a second before dipping back down again. Without a word, I felt her attention envelop my own as before.

_Why didn't I think of this before?_

No time to second guess myself. It was now or never. I gathered up my strength, what Maeve was lending me, and just before I shouted out my intentions, I felt the residue from Mab's old energy gather toward us like a super-charged magnet drawing in all the little bits and pieces of metal about it.

"_Disperdorius Pyrofuego!_"

And then the direct contest of wills between us began. A direct attempt to dismantle the very essence that made up the genius loci's body and sense of self.

The kind of thing you don't attempt unless you're fully rested and on your prime turf... or happen to have a sudden channel into the heart of Arctis Tor and the Winter Wellspring in full.

I felt my blood run cold as my veins frosted over, my skin taking on a white-blue tinge, my heart shuddering to a paltry ten beats a minute. Ice crystals manifested across my features, clothing, staff. It extended across Maeve and spread into the ice beneath our feet, reenforcing it in seconds.

Pinpricks of white fire danced across my vision as my Soulfire battled to keep my body alive, such was the cold with which I willingly bathed myself in. For a Queen or, to some degree a Lady, such a thing would have only been mildly unpleasant to mildly debilitating.

For a Knight, I may as well have opened a Way onto Pluto and hunkered down for about ten minutes. That was why I had to rely on my soul first and foremost.

Even so... even _so_. I had the power, and I had declared my intentions forth. And I knew I had the will to make use of them both; what I desired to be real, _was_, even as old Mother Winter had done to me a week ago.

The entire upper reaches of the volcano began to take on a paler blue tinge, spreading outward from the floor. Scorching heat faded into hot gusts, that into a mild breeze, and that to a cool flicker before a chill torrent.

The genius loci tried to approach and knock me down, then, its fiery flesh darkening and growing harder with every moment that passed. I stopped it in its tracks with a whirlwind of biting, sub-zero frost. It bellowed again and tried to draw strength from its surroundings, but between the emptied pot below and the rapidly freezing environment, it had little enough to fortify itself upon.

Time seemed to have no meaning as we stood there. Hours could have passed, with how little I was able to feel, only I know I would have been dead a thousand times over in such a passage if it had actually occurred.

At the end the genius loci shuddered and sank to the ground as its will crumbled before the constant onslaught, going completely pitch-black even as the remaining lava below dried into new soil and fractions of obsidian throughout.

With that, I allowed my spell to fizzle out, severing the connection. I truly did pass out after that.

* * *

><p>I awoke in my bed in Arctis Tor. The old-fashioned calender hanging on one wall across from me said that two months had passed on the earth from the morning we departed from Demonreach.<p>

I couldn't remember how many months that meant had slipped away here at Winter's heart, trapped in a coma. I half-expected Sarissa to walk through the door with a tray of steaming soup and a reserved smile on her face.

Instead, Mab herself entered with the first meal in all that time for me to eat. She was not smiling, not precisely. I remembered the last time she had fed me - it had not ended well.

I wasn't so weak as to not sit up and try to greet her, but my limbs felt leaden and unresponsive, and I only managed to incline my head a bit before giving up on it.

Mab settled down beside me and set the tray across her lap, simply watching my face and eyes. I felt the urge to shift and look away, but I stared back.

"My Knight, my Knight," she began softly. "So eager to kill yourself again." She lifted the spoon and pressed it against my lips until I opened them up enough to sip. I tried to sniff out any lingering poison, but hunger won out over sensibility. It tasted like heaven and boiled on the way down.

As she fed me she continued to speak. "You have had a guest, my Knight. He is not the usual sort I would allow here, not the least of which owing to his insult."

Better to stay silent and let her talk rather than risk saying the wrong thing. "You were foolish, my Knight, taking such power by the reigns. You would be but an empty husk by now if not for his aide."

From a corner of the room, a Way hung open in the air into the cottage on Demonreach. The genius loci of the same name stared through at me with burning eyes.

"**_BROKEN WARDEN. JAIL AT RISK._**"

I blinked at the message, then looked down lower and noticed the thin vines and roots sweeping through the Way back into one of his hands. I followed it along as best I could into the room and settled at last on my right arm, where they dug into my veins and threaded upward.

"**_RECOVER. THE WARDEN MUST BE ABLE._**"

Demonreach returned to silence. I thought I felt his roots massaging my heart, squeezing my lungs. A faint pain rubbing over and over again.

I shuddered, spilling soup across my chest. "Did not your mother ever teach you to swallow?" Mab quoted me with a smile. She reached out with a napkin and dabbed the mess up before it could stain the sheets and bedding.

"Why?" I finally spoke up.

"Why?" she asked back. "Why did I send my daughter to you? Why did I send _you_ to Kaho'olawe together?" I nodded impatiently at her, almost spilling the next spoonful of soup. Strength was definitely returning as I ate, enough so that I could rise upright better.

"Because some debts are settled once, and some are renewed at certain times. And it developed a bond that you have both been sorely lacking, my Knight. Maeve has never shared her strength with a mortal. Now you are tied together deeper than even _Nemesis_ could fool if ever again it may infect her. You will _know_, wizard, just the same as she."

* * *

><p><strong>End.<strong>

This story began as a simple challenge, meant to be a couple thousand words at most and knocked out over the course of an hour. I eventually realized that it was better developed with time and thought and thus began the process of transforming something simple into something longer, more complex, giving a little meaning here and there. When I was done some days later it had blossomed up to 5000 words, and I am, overall, satisfied with beginning, middle, and end. Some day I intend to go back through and fill out the transition across the islands of Hawaii so that I may show, rather than tell, of the difficulties Harry and Maeve surmount on their journey toward the floating Moai.

Thank you for your time. I can only hope that you have enjoyed this one-shot, that I have conveyed all of the characters within a reasonable semblance of Mr. Butcher's perspective on them, and that I may continue in that vein with my next- or prior- stories set into the wonderful world of the Dresden Files.


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